Definition of Distraction
by 350ml
Summary: "I have nightmares sometimes. Not about them - they're never about them, but they're about the dark, or the panic... it's been years, but it still comes back." When a supposedly full-proof plan goes awry, Grant Ward's little brother finds himself in the company of Coulson's Team.


**Definition of Distraction.**

_Chapter One._

* * *

Physical entry was something he always tried to avoid. The whole idea of slipping into a target building undetected, it was risky, something he never liked. Risky meant numerous negative potential outcomes. _Risky_ meant _danger_. He was far more comfortable picking up dead drops, or chasing down runaway drug runners. Much safer.

But here he was, lurking around in the dark underground parking lot of a multimillion pound building on a warm evening in the middle of summer, watching for some kind of opportunity. Pound. Multimillion pound. Rhys Ward had been in the United Kingdom on 'business' for the better part of four months now, and four months was a long time. Everything could change in that time, hell, everything had changed. The world had changed - the protectors were now the terrorists, with the terrorists being hailed as the protectors. Global security was becoming a form of private affair. The people no longer trusted those who lead them on, but go along with them for the sake of security. Familiarity. In a way, it was moving up to a whole new level. Like in those crappy little computer games Maynard used to hoard.

Player One, are you ready?

Regardless, every day he feels his home slip away and it kills him inside. Not much. Just a little. God, something would be wrong with him if he missed that place enough to warrant action. Manchester was different from Massachusetts, very different. It was different from New York; still fast and exiting and vast, but different. Less of a tourist attraction and more of a business complex. He liked it in Manchester. He could vanish, walking among five hundred ten thousand people as a nobody. Scale across empty rooftops as if he didn't exist. Rhys could never have this amount of animosity in Massachusetts, he's been wondering lately, if he ever did.

Running away seemed like a good idea. He's been doing it long enough, so if felt like he was doing the right thing when he started branching out and moving away from the States. Lots of distractions. It's a temporary arrangement - never permanent. He had to go back, for Alice. Had to get her that car she wanted. Had to go visit Mother, as much as he wanted to avoid it. Rhys has always been running, even growing up when he couldn't run fast or far enough, but now... now he can. So much so that if feels purely intentional.

But _now_, he's not entirely sure if it's for the best. In a world that frowns upon the people who had dutifully sworn to protect them for years. In a world were he has hyped up back ally colleagues who can destroy an economy at a liberty of a keystroke. In a world like this, he wonders if he's making everything worse. Sometimes he wonders how things might have been different, if he had just swallowed his damn fear and stuck with them for a little longer. If he had stayed home. If he had turned away from the city girl who pulled up when he flashed the hitchhiker's sign. If, if, if. Rhys knows it's to late to take it back, but he can't help thinking. Things weren't going to be easy - they were practically homeless.

It's these thoughts that often evade his nightmare plagued dreams. Late at night, when he's left lying awake after the sense of sudden panic, camped out in whatever cheap ass hotel room he had booked, whatever abandoned office building he was trespassing in, whatever safe house he was using - he couldn't stop thinking about it. 'A man's gotta stay with his family.' they had said. 'A real man belongs with his family.'

His parents hated him. Or, they had a funny way of showing affection. Either way. His sister was moving on now - she's got her Collage. She's got her man. Maynard is locked up. Again. Grant... Rhys tries not to think about Grant anymore. How is that a family?

Rhys isn't going to lie though, he does wish she had stayed at home, in that cursed burnt out nightmare building. In so much trouble and danger, but together all the same.

It's too late for that though - and the thought makes him laugh. It's cold, short and quiet, but it's there.

It's always sodding to late.

Gritting his teeth, Rhys crushes a discarded cigarette butt into the asphalt covered ground. He's not used to wearing a collar and he tugs at it, feeling the stiffness of the, for once, extremely upmarket suit he's been squeezed into. He's not used to the finery of tailorship and his shoes are that damn shiny that he can see his reflection in them. They're not warn in and are giving him killer blisters. A week earlier he had come here dressed in his usual duds, comfortable but fitted PK gear and it had been just fine. He'd gone with the pretext of dropping off a letter to some employee or another, in broad daylight and nobody cared. So why he needs a suit, he doesn't know. Of course, the real reason he had turned up was because he wanted to get a good look at their ID cards. He'd need one of those. The company put it's employee's head shot up in the upper left corner, name jut below that, last name first in block letters. The company of the name had been written at the bottom, in bright red, also in block letters.

Forging something as simple as a ID card is not hard. He had searched the internet for the company's logo, then with that, he got a scanned copy of his own photo and after thirty minutes of working with a professional and touching it up in Photoshop, he had managed to make out a presumably standard facsimile of a company ID, which he then sealed into a dime-store plastic holder.

He wound up creating another phony ID for a colleague, who Rhys had on because this job required a degree of IT specs' he's not familiar with.

The good thing about working jobs like these though, is that the IDs don't even have to be that authentic looking. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it won't get more then a lasting glance. As long as the essential elements were in the correct positions and places and look more or less they way they are expected too, you can get away with it.

But, Rhys is far from stupid. He's played the game long enough that there could be one overzealous guard or an employee who likes to play security watchdog, all insisting on taking a closer look.

It's a danger one tends to run into when you live a life like theirs.

In the parking lot, he stays out of sight, watching the singular glow of a cigarette and the brighter, larger glow of a smartphone. Duncan, who was on the other end of the line - down the street in a blacked out Transit van, had hacked the fellow out of idle curiosity, and it turns out the man is something of a double crossing cheat. Seeing two girls at the same time. Appalling, but Rhys doesn't do anything about it.

No. He waits until the employee is finished and then moves in behind him as the bloke makes off towards the rear entrance door. It's one of those that unlocks when they swipe their card against the reader. The guy reaches the door, notices that Rhys is following and takes a quick glance at the vague region of his torso - he sees the company badge and holds the door open for him. Not wanting to blow his potential cover - and because, hell, it's polite - Rhys gives a small smile and nods his head in thanks. It's a technique called 'tailgating', something he learned without even realising it - common courtesy and all, it's everyday politeness that's abused rather frequently.

Once he's inside the building, he begins walking down the corridors with the stride of someone en route to an important task. In fact, he is en route to something important; the Information Tech (IT) Department, which he finds after a few minutes of walking, on the far western side of the building. He had done his homework in advance - he always does - and not only does he have the entire blueprints of the building memorized inside and out, but he also has the name of one of the company's network engineers, one of the ones that that had full administrator rights to the network.

He doesn't know what Duncan wants with a full administrator's rights, but the man is paying a good amount for him to break in, so Rhys isn't going to argue.

Instead, he just glances up at the ceiling. The office beside him is locked, per he expected, so he'll need another way in. Above him are those white soundproofing squares, the kind that are often used to create a dropped ceiling with something of a crawlspace, usually for things like piping, electrical lines and air vents and so on. So he finds one that is close enough and jumps up to knock it loose, before checking that it has a pipe or something to grasp hold of - it has a water pipe, running horizontally, luckily - and walking over to one side of the corridor, looking around making sure he's alone as he does so. When he's positive, he starts to run along in a silent jog and Tic-Tacs up using the wall beside him towards the hole, grasping out for the pipe that ran above it and pulling himself up.

It's dusty in the crawlspace, but he doesn't care. Lying flat on his stomach and crawling along, he replaces the tile before moving along slowly. Within a minute, Rhys has dropped into the locked office and scans the room. The office is dark and turning on a light is dangerous, but it isn't necessary - the glow from the engineer's computer is enough for him to see everything he needs. Sliding his hand into his pocket, Rhys takes out his smartphone.

"_9[] 92. 3][[]927 £][2 8][ 758 =][. !5 651£=_."

When he's pressed send, Rhys opens the locked door from the inside and checks the corridor before crouching down and ramming a small, raised piece of plastic in the door frame to keep it from locking him out while he's gone. From a distance, it looks like the door is shut completely and he makes his way back to the car park relativity confident.

He's in the stairwell when he gets the replies.

"_651£= 12£ 92 4][#989][2, []9#856 !][2£_."

"_:)_"

Rolling his eyes, he moves over towards the door that leads out into the car park and lets Duncan in. Tall but scrawny, Duncan is a thirty year old former MIT student and he carries a small duffel bag with everything he needs over one shoulder. He's also a bit dense, well, on a common standpoint and Rhys has to slam a hand over his mouth when the idiot makes to speak. Probably a lovely enlightening comment about the state of his suit. Scowling at him to get his point across, he leads Duncan through the building, along the same route he took beforehand and they reach the engineer's office again. Though this time they can get through the door.

Rhys shuts it behind them as Duncan starts scanning the man's desk. checking the top drawer and under the keyboard to see if he had left himself a note with his computer password. No luck, but to a hacker of Duncan's ability, it's not much of a problem. As he starts to replace the soundproofing square, Duncan takes out a CD from his bag. It's got a bootable version of the Linux operating system, he says, one that contains a hacker toolkit. His commentary is quite unnecessary - Rhys doesn't care, nor is he going to get into hacking any time soon, but he doesn't tell the man to shut up. He's being quiet, at least. As he pops it into the CD drive, Duncan restarts the computer, before explaining that one of the tools allows him to change the local administrator's password on his computer.

Shaking his head as he starts to remove all evidence of their existence - mainly, his dusty footprints - he reminds Duncan to change it to something he'll remember, earning him a silencing look from his colleague.

Once he's done, Duncan removes the CD and restarts the computer, this time logging into the administrator's account.

Rhys glances at the clock, winces and turns towards the doorway, standing nearby just in case. He can hear Duncan working as fast as he can to install something called a 'Remote Access Trojan', something that gives him full access to the system in order to log keystrokes, grab password hashes and even instruct the webcam to take photos. Creepy stuff; and the only reason why Rhys doesn't own a computer, aside from his phone. Duncan claims he's almost finished and goes into the registry of his computer and sets 'last logged-in user' to the engineer's username so there won't be any evidence of his entry on a cyber scale.

"Righto, lets hit the road!" he cheers with a celebratory arm pump. Rhys doesn't say anything - but then again, he doesn't often say anything anyway - but on the way out, resets the lock. They're sat in the back of Duncan's van well over an hour of driving later, near a park and Rhys strips out of the suit and into his own clothes, shoving them into a black plastic bag, ready to be dumped when he leaves. "When he next logs on, it'll establish a connection to my laptop and I'll have full administrator privileges. After that it's a matter of recovering the passwords of most of the company's employees and then one of the back-end serves that processes customer transactions and I can get to the credit card numbers."

Rhys looks back at him coolly, eyebrows raised. "They'll be encrypted."

Duncan gives him an annoyed look. "It's no matter, I can find the key used to encrypt the card numbers. It's conveniently hidden in a stored procedure within the database of the SQL server. Then my man, I'll have access to millions and millions of credit card numbers."

"Speaking of credit cards..."

With a short huff, Duncan passes him a plastic bag. It's filled with fifty dollar bills and as he pulls up a seat near the back doors, Rhys gets to counting them.

"Wh-... damn, what?!" Duncan suddenly frowns, his typing becoming all that more frantic. Rhys throws him a curious look of mild displeasure. "Someone's found us."

That makes him freeze up and he full on glares at the so called hacker.

"You said it was a full-proof plan."

"It was!"

Shaking his head, Rhys stacks up his notes again and places them into the bag, grabbing his backpack as he does so. It's not the first time something has happened, nor is it the first time he has had to ditch, so he's decided what his course of action will be nigh on instantly and he opens the back door, looking out into the warm Manchester night. Duncan's too panicky to even hear him leave, but Rhys does hear him shout out in surprise when he slams the doors shut again, disappearing into the thick of Manchester City's population without so much of a word.

* * *

**[|] D.O.D [|]**

* * *

"Coulson, you might want to come and take a look at this."

He does, and when he's stood evaluating a grainy CCTV image in the Playground's debriefing room, he folds his arms. He's not sure why he's looking at this. Or, what he's even looking for, and the look he gives May suggests that.

In return, May glances at him, then at Skye, who is sat over towards their far left, typing manically on a laptop keyboard, her face scrunched up with a half pissed, half concentrating expression. He can't see her screen from here, but he assumes it's something to do with the blurry image of what he assumes is some form of street on the larger screen before him. "Skye, pull up the one you got a few minutes earlier." May commands gently, leaning against the table. Exhaling slowly, the S.H.I.E.L.D. hacker glances up at the larger screen, presses a few keys and merely watches as another image replaces that of the street. It's a similar one, with the majority of the same features, but this time it's zoomed in a little, on what appears to be a person. Frowning, Coulson moves forwards to inspect it a little closer, eyes narrowing as he does so.

"Here, I have something better. I tracked the hacker, had a little root around to see what he was up to - he's stealing credit card details from a company called Forrester Security, the UK Branch." Typing some more and then pausing to adjust something on her mouse pad, she slams a hand down on the spacebar and watches as a video feed comes up. It's far better quality then that of the street camera and it shows someone moving towards a doorway, opening it and letting someone else inside. When the person turns towards the camera - not looking right at it, he notes - the general face structure and build instantly chills Coulson to the core and he stiffens at the sight of it. It's oddly familiar, somehow, in a way he can't really recognise. May too leans forwards and her face is filled with poorly hidden concern - and with that, he suddenly places it. A little clicking noise goes off in his head, like a grenade pin being pulled.

There's only one person he's met with that exact facial structure... the suit only adds to the look. The longer he looks at the image, the stronger his conviction grows.

"Is that Ward?!" he demands, turning towards May who shakes her head suddenly.

Skye pipes up then, still typing away. "No." she glances up once, face set hard. "Ward is still locked up - we checked. That and if it was Ward, we wouldn't have found out this way. Forrester Security isn't an actual retail company; it's an FBI undercover building that houses a couple of hundred servers with the aid of the UK's MI6. S.H.I.E.L.D's system freaked out when they started tracking it, because facial recognition from the camera picked up on someone it recognised."

"Likely a relative, Ward had brothers - two, I think." May adds and Skye frowns at her screen.

"Says here that his older brother is in the middle of a six year sentence for repeated assault." and then she opens her mouth, before closing it and nodding. "Found him. Rhys John Ward, the youngest... wow... that's a lot of information. I didn't know Ward's little brother was a common day public mercenary." she looks up at them both then and May seems mildly surprised too, while Coulson continues to stare at the screen.

"The FBI will be looking for him." he states, turning towards May, who stands lent up against the table with her arms folded. "Usually in times like this, I'd let him get what's coming to him, but if they find out who he is..."

"Not just that..." Skye trails, her expression has dropped and it's much darker, saddened almost. "I'm reading the file S.H.I.E.L.D. used to fill out on a serving Agent's next of kin, AC - this guy's got more problems then we can count."

"What do you mean?"

She stands, bringing her laptop over and placing it gently down onto the table top, turning it towards him. "He's been checked into AnE thrice on account of Heroin overdose, recently finished his second rehab course - from the looks of it, by about five months. He's supposed to see a phycatrist every Friday... and add that to what Ward told me about his family life... he's had it rough." looking towards Coulson properly, she gives him a look that's close to begging. "Sir, if the FBI get hold of him, or the English authorities for that matter, they'll tear him apart."

"It's too risky-" May starts, but Skye butts in with an admirable amount of force.

"Ward told me what he did to him - he beat the crap out of the kid when he was growing up, and you know about the well incident. We can't just leave him, it's not right."

Coulson pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs hard, eventually moving his hand up to rub at his forehead before re-folding his arms and looking at the screen again. Hard. "Rhys is an individual who has a former S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent as a family member, that will come up on any governmental system. He'll be interrogated for a long time as a suspected terrorist sympathiser, if we are lucky." he grimaces and then, after a long moment of consideration, he spits it out. "Skye, how quickly can you track him down?"

She pauses for a few seconds. "Give me the plane ride to Manchester Airport and I'll have him."

He nods at May.

"Get Tripplet and have the plane ready to take off by ten tonight."


End file.
